Zach Schwartz, who commutes to and from his job in downtown Minneapolis, rides the 14C bus home after work because it is convenient and it saves him money on parking, on Tuesday, March 31, 2015. (Pioneer Press: Scott Takushi)

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As Minnesota lawmakers debate major transportation funding this spring, support for roads and bridges is nearly unanimous.

Mass transit isn’t nearly as lucky.

Its critics rarely focus on the backbone of Minnesota’s transit system: buses. Instead, they aim at the more controversial — and costly — light-rail lines.

“People who oppose (transit), their first image is light rail,” said Rep. Tim Kelly, R-Red Wing, chairman of the House Transportation Policy and Finance Committee. Kelly said light rail is “a very expensive proposition.”

Kelly and other Republicans would rather invest more in roads and bridges, though they’ve included a little extra money for transit in their transportation proposal.

Meanwhile, Gov. Mark Dayton and his fellow Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party lawmakers have proposed a tax increase in the Twin Cities metro area to expand transit.

“It’s good for students to get to school. It’s good for senior citizens to be able to stay in their home. It’s good to be able to develop walkable, vibrant neighborhoods,” said Sen. Scott Dibble, DFL-Minneapolis, chairman of the Senate’s Transportation and Public Safety Committee. “It’s good to not have to build two and a half additional lanes of car traffic on 35-W.”

Light rail is controversial because of its price tag — the recently finished Green Line linking downtown St. Paul with Minneapolis cost $957 million. Supporters, though, say it’s justified along dense routes where it can move many people more efficiently than buses can.

Another point of controversy is on which type of transit rider the public’s money should be aimed at. There are riders by choice and riders by necessity. Kelly said top priority must be given to riders without cars who rely on mass transit.

“I just have to default to taking care of those people who really don’t have a choice,” he said.

But offering more options to those who choose mass transit over personal vehicles can ease traffic congestion by taking cars off the road and better serve a growing population.

Here’s what you need to know about Minnesota’s transit system as lawmakers fight over improvement plans.

Map showing the different Greater Minnesota transit systems and their ridership, as of 2015. (Pioneer Press: David Montgomery)

There are 45 transit agencies under the umbrella of Greater Minnesota Transit. These range from urban systems in Duluth and Rochester to rural networks such as Arrowhead Transit, which covers eight counties in northeastern Minnesota.

Many of the rural networks aren’t built around defined bus routes, as urban transit usually is. Instead, they can be primarily “dial-a-ride,” where customers make an appointment for a bus to pick them up and take them to a destination.

Metro-area transit is mostly under the auspices of the Metropolitan Council, but there are several agencies at work:

Metro Transit is the biggest, with about 84.5 million rides last year among 132 routes.

Other arms of the Met Council handles about another 10 million rides a year.

Metro Mobility has about 2 million riders a year. It operates on-demand for people with disabilities.

And most of these trips, urban or rural, are on buses.

Under Metro Transit, 80 percent of Twin Cities metro trips last year were on buses vs. 20 percent on trains. In Greater Minnesota, almost every one of the 12 million trips was by bus.

In Greater Minnesota, two-thirds of the rides are in larger cities. Duluth, Rochester, St. Cloud, Mankato, Moorhead, East Grand Forks and La Crescent combined for 7.4 million rides in 2009. An additional million riders came in the smaller cities such as Albert Lea, Hibbing and St. Peter. About 2.7 million rides in 2009 were in rural areas.

Many transit riders fall into one of two groups: riders by choice and riders by necessity.

Those in the latter group are often unable to get around without mass transit, whether because of disability, age or lack of a car. For them, mass transit can be a lifeline.

Riders by choice have the flexibility to get where they want by car. But they choose mass transit for a variety of reasons: to avoid traffic, to dodge the hassle and cost of parking, to be environmentally conscious.

A 2010 survey found that about half of Greater Minnesota Transit riders didn’t have driver’s licenses. Just under 20 percent of its riders had a disability.

More of the rural and small urban trips tend to be seniors or people with a disabilities trying to get to appointments or shopping, said Mike Schadauer, who oversees Greater Minnesota Transit as head of the Minnesota Department of Transportation’s Office of Transit.

In the Twin Cities, rider demographics differ based on the service. Almost all riders on the Northstar commuter line and express bus lines have driver’s licenses. On the light-rail lines, three riders in four can drive. But only 52 percent of local bus riders have licenses.

Operating mass transit last year in Minnesota cost about $574 million. That figure includes federal, state and local shares. The metro has about 90 percent of the funding and 90 percent of the state’s annual transit rides.

The Met Council got $458 million, and of that, $372 million went to the buses and trains operated by Metro Transit. The bus system cost $295 million to run, about 80 percent of the total. Light rail cost $58 million and commuter rail $18 million.

Greater Minnesota Transit cost $68 million, of which half went to the rural systems and most of the rest to the transit systems in the system’s seven largest cities.

Some of Minnesota’s transit systems are far more expensive to operate than others. In 2013, to operate their systems, transit agencies paid:

$3.70 per Metro Transit bus ride.

$3.19 per Blue Line light rail ride (the Green Line wasn’t running yet).

$22.55 per Northstar commuter line ride.

The figures don’t include the cost to build systems and buy buses, only to operate existing stock.

Metro Mobility cost $60 million last year, almost $27 per ride. Its expenses have been rising 6 percent to 10 percent a year, a number that’s expected to rise as the population ages.

In Greater Minnesota, the larger city systems mostly cost from $2.40 to $4 per ride to operate; smaller cities typically cost slightly more. The average rural system costs $11.90 per rider, but that figure can rise as high as $23.93 and fall as low as $4.17.

On top of the $574 million in operating expenses are fairly considerable capital costs: more than $300 million in 2013. That included $200 million in light-rail costs due to the construction at the time of the Green Line. But even the ongoing metro bus service cost more than $70 million in capital costs — mostly for new vehicles and passenger facilities.

Metro Transit has more than 900 buses, each of which costs between $400,000 and $750,000 to replace when it reaches the end of its roughly 12-year lifespan. The agency’s 86 light rail cars are more expensive — about $3.8 to $4 million each — but they have 30- to 60-year lifespans.

The Green Line, finished last year, cost $957 million. That included about $155 million for vehicles, plus the costs of 18 new stations and 9.8 miles of new track.

Taxpayers shoulder the majority of the cost. In the metro area, fares account for about $100 million in revenue last year — about 30 percent of the operating cost of transit.

Federal grants play a big role in paying for new transitways and vehicles — 55 percent of capital costs last year. But federal taxpayers covered just 7 percent of operating costs.

State taxpayers are in the reverse situation. The state paid 62 percent of transit operating costs last year, but just 5 percent of capital costs.

Local governments pay big portions of both types of spending: 43 percent of capital costs and 30 percent of operating costs.

For Greater Minnesota transit, local governments are required by state law to provide a 15 percent match for rural networks and 20 percent for urban networks. In practice, Schadauer said, most pay a larger share than required.

Under a 2006 state constitutional amendment, at least 40 percent of the motor vehicle sales tax goes to transit. Currently, transit gets exactly 40 percent — 36 percent for the metro area and 4 percent for Greater Minnesota — the rest goes to roads.

Anoka, Dakota, Hennepin, Ramsey and Washington counties each levy a 0.25 percent sales tax that flows into a special fund: the Counties Transit Improvement Board. The board has distributed about $650 million in grants in the past seven years supporting the “transitway” projects, such as light rail, commuter rail and rapid buses.

The normal cost distribution for a transitway in the metro area is 50 percent federal funds, 30 percent transit board funds, 10 percent local and 10 percent from the state.

In Greater Minnesota, the transit program is acknowledged to be underfunded. A 2008 law set a goal of meeting 80 percent of transit needs by this year and 90 percent by 2025. Transit needs are calculated by looking at people who might be unable to get around without transit: zero-car households, senior citizens and people with disabilities.

Schadauer estimates Greater Minnesota Transit needs about $12 million more a year to meet that need. Right now Minnesota’s meeting about 63 or 64 percent of the need.

Greater Minnesota Transit might get the money it wants. Dayton, Republicans and DFL lawmakers have all proposed at least $12 million per year for outstate transit, though some of the details differ.

In the Twin Cities, the Met Council’s long-term plan includes upgrades to the existing system, such as new bus shelters. The Met Council also wants a major expansion of dedicated transitways. Its plan includes 20 transitways, of which 16 or 17 would be bus rapid transit, and the rest light or commuter rail.

Those new transitways can be built and the existing local bus system improved in the next 10 years if lawmakers approve Dayton’s $280 million-per-year metro sales tax proposal, said Adam Duininck, chairman of the Met Council.

A GOP proposal includes far less money for metro-area transit than Dayton. It sets aside about $100 million to the Met Council for capital improvements over the next decade.

With existing revenue, Duininck said, the Met Council would likely be able to build maybe half of the 20 new transitways it wants, and be able to afford almost no bus upgrades.

David covered politics and government for the Pioneer Press from 2014 to 2017.

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